On corporate welfare

What did we learn from Bradley R. Gitz’s redundant, childish and divisive name-calling and blaming column in the New Year’s Day paper? He hates Democrats. He compares Democrats to Marxists because they oppose the Republican corporate welfare tax cut. Republicans like to think they are champions of cutting taxes when income tax and inheritance taxes were both made law by Republicans.

Abraham Lincoln was first to start charging income tax. You might remember from history that at about the same time he gave us his famous quote, “Government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.” So by a Republican’s own words we can see that income tax is meant for the government, which is for the people, so our nation will not perish. Republicans ignored the fact that an overwhelming number of voters were against the corporate welfare tax plan. The difference between Republicans and Democrats is Democrats give help to real people who need it and Republicans think corporations are people and help them when they don’t need it.

The debt is huge and Republicans used to claim to be the fiscally responsible ones. They have controlled the House which controls the purse, so isn’t all the debt on the Republicans? Mr Gitz tries to blame President Obama for the $9 trillion in debt added during the last eight years. Everybody knows it was the last disastrous Republican tax cut that was to blame, and the two unnecessary endless wars. Let’s not forget the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act.

The government needs money to operate if Republicans want to buy bombs or if Democrats want to help starving children. Cutting corporate taxes by 40 percent won’t even keep it going, let alone pay off the debt.

President Obama’s economic recovery is in its ninth year, and with President Trump stealing credit for the good times and now the corporate welfare tax plan, it sure feels like Republicans are thieves!

SCOTT RUFF

Hot Springs they have no idea of the difference between weather and climate.

NASA says it’s a difference in time. Weather is the conditions over a short period of time, while climate is an average of how the atmosphere behaves over longer periods of time. Weather is what’s happening right now, and it’s local. Just because it’s cold here doesn’t mean it’s cold everywhere. Right now in Australia, it’s summer, and it definitely ain’t cold there.

These guys also apparently don’t understand that global warming and climate change aren’t the same thing. Global warming refers to the “upward temperature trend across the entire Earth since the early 20th century” while climate change is the “broad range of global phenomena created predominantly by burning fossil fuels, which add heat-trapping gases to earth’s atmosphere,” according to NASA. Climate change is believed to be real by the vast majority of climate scientists, and believed to be caused by human activities. It’s why we have extreme weather events like massive hurricanes and “bomb cyclones.”

But, yeah, it’s cold right now, so they must be right.

MITCH DEAN

Dayton